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Post by Won Young Seo on Oct 22, 2015 3:23:43 GMT
I quite liked the overall tone of Kasai, the narrator, in "Merry Christmas", but the part that struck me the most is when we find out that Shizueko came back to Tokyo last year and Kasai comments that she must then have come right back after the war. Considering how there's an American soldier mentioned at the end who the food stall owner seems to mock by saying "Hello, Merry Christmas", I'm guessing this story takes place after the first World War. Considering the casualties and destruction that occured during the battles in Japan it's interesting that we only get a small glimpse of the actual tragedy or its aftermath (through the mother's death and the presence of the American soldier). Instead, we're treated to Kasai's daily life which, for the most part, is inane and utterly unremarkable; he meets an old friend but, as Kasai himself says, that sort of event is only to be expected in a city like Tokyo. It's sort of like the war never happened and life simply went on unremarkably... until the news of the death of her mother plunges us back into the reality of the time period this story is set in.
Question: What sort of reponse or effect do you think the author was going for by writing about a such an uneventful life set during such a tumultous time period?
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Post by Hiba Rashid on Oct 22, 2015 4:03:16 GMT
Yay! I'm glad I am not the only one thinking about the story's relevance to the war (World War II, by the way). I was actually quite confused myself why the author would describe Tokyo as unchanged, even though the war caused destruction to the city and many deaths (like in the firebombings). I couldn't find the year in which this story was written, but Dazai Osamu died in 1948 -- three years after the end of WWII. This means that he must have written "Merry Christmas" between the years of 1945 - 1948. Dazai lived through the immediate post-war life and this story may have been his way of capturing that life. Perhaps Tokyo was able to restore itself and return to its liveliness, soon after the war. It became a city where there were no traces left of war. Also, it seems that many people have forgotten about the firebombings of Tokyo as well, almost as if the city buried its horrible history from the war. If you're interested, here is the link to a short article that talk about this issue: nation.time.com/2012/03/27/a-forgotten-horror-the-great-tokyo-air-raid/
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Post by Alan Wong on Oct 22, 2015 15:53:45 GMT
I just searched for the year Merry Christmas was written and I think it was 1947 (so Hiba is right).
I think that by writing about Kasai's (dull) life, the author was trying to maybe give us some insight into the way the public might have been reacting. Focusing on the small, normal, and mundane aspects of life might have been helpful in recovering from the trauma and aftereffects of the war (as well as the firebombings Hiba mentioned). At the same time, he might have been talking about the indomitable nature of Tokyo and how nothing can get in the way of a city like that.
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Post by Mina Kaneko on Oct 23, 2015 3:46:45 GMT
Thinking about the story in the context of the war is really important -- with this in mind, it seems Shizueko's mother's death is a microcosm of the war and the tragedies it has brought, despite life in the city continuing as it had much before. As a few other people have said, the city has kept on moving, and we hear inane conversations (like the guy in the restaurant) although tons of civilians are dying amidst an insufferable and defeated war. The narrator's own presumptuous feelings about Shizueko seem equally inane, until he realizes her mother had died... It's an interesting decision, though, to be so implicit about the effects of the war on the narrator himself. A lot of the stories I've read so far in this anthology seem to address the war in this way: they present a protagonist in his seemingly insulated and personal life, and offer subtle criticisms or commentaries about the war but never appear to address it too specifically. I know literary censorship was high during WWII, and I imagine any outright postwar sentiment was also still heavily reprimanded as the war was ending and shortly after... there seems to lie a much greater subtext in this story (and in others) than outright opinions, but I'd be curious to know when censorship was loosened (legally and culturally), since the country has such a complex relationship with it...
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